Authors: Michael Rubin, Rubin
ISBN-13: 9780201758481, ISBN-10: 0201758482
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Date Published: September 2001
Edition: VIDEO
Michael Rubin is an entertainment-technology inventor, entrepreneur, graphic designer, editor, digital video advocate, and maybe a few other things. He has written and published three books, including NONLINEAR: a field guide to digital video and film editing, recently released in its fourth edition. In the past, Michael has worked on numerous feature films and TV programming, including Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky and the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove.
Congratulations! You've got a brand-new digital camcorder. Now what do you do with it? Before you shoot a single frame of tape, pick up The Little Digital Video Book. This friendly guide to the basics of digital video will teach you how to shoot well, organize easily, and quickly edit your own footage. For new camcorder owners, it's the idealand affordableintroduction to the exciting world of quality digital filmmaking.
The Little Digital Video Book is not some dense, jargon-filled reference tome. Instead, it focuses on practical shooting and editing techniques, and shows you how to start (and actually finish) that video project you have in mindin less than a day. You get a thorough grounding in the basics of digital video, from how to get a good close-up shot and how to add a sound track to your video to how to organize your videotapes. The Little Digital Video Book is platform- and software-neutral, truly making it the guide for the moviemaking masses.
Introduction | xi | |
Chapter 1 | The Basics | 1 |
Your Tools | 1 | |
Your camcorder | 2 | |
Your computer | 5 | |
Your software | 7 | |
Other tools | 8 | |
The bottom line | 8 | |
Your Process | 9 | |
Preparation | 9 | |
Shooting | 10 | |
Editing | 10 | |
Finishing | 11 | |
Chapter 2 | Your Camera | 13 |
Fondle Your Camera | 14 | |
Basic camera anatomy | 14 | |
Assignment 1 | The Blindfold Test | 23 |
Camera Care | 23 | |
Playing videotapes | 24 | |
A long camera life | 25 | |
Videotape | 26 | |
Tape length | 27 | |
Tape quality | 27 | |
Cassette memory (CM) or IC memory | 27 | |
Using Your First Videotape | 29 | |
Assignment 2 | Shooting Tape | 30 |
Your Friend, Timecode | 31 | |
Learning to read timecode | 33 | |
Assignment 3 | Working with Your timecode | 33 |
Assignment 4 | Break the Timecode | 35 |
Why broken timecode is a problem | 37 | |
Assignment 5 | Fix the Timecode | 38 |
End Search--a hip feature | 40 | |
Summary | 40 | |
Chapter 3 | Shooting | 41 |
The First Important Thing About Shooting | 41 | |
Rubin's Rules of Shooting | 43 | |
How to Shoot | 46 | |
Your body and your camera | 46 | |
Think like a wildlife documentarian | 48 | |
Structure | 49 | |
Middle shots: The action or event | 50 | |
Beginning shots | 51 | |
Ending (closure) shots | 51 | |
Camera Shots | 52 | |
The close-up | 53 | |
The medium shot | 54 | |
The wide shot | 55 | |
Coverage | 56 | |
The establishing shot | 57 | |
The shot/reverse shot | 59 | |
The over-the-shoulder (OS) shot | 63 | |
The point-of-view (POV) shot | 64 | |
The cut-away shot (a.k.a. the "insert") | 65 | |
The pickup | 66 | |
"Popping" between shots | 66 | |
How long should a shot be? | 67 | |
Looking into the camera | 67 | |
The Hollywood Way--A Helpful Paradigm | 68 | |
Watching the raw material | 69 | |
Assignment 6 | Watch Some TV | 70 |
Takes and Repetition | 70 | |
Framing and Design | 71 | |
Centering (or really, Not-centering) | 71 | |
Balance | 72 | |
Safe frame margins | 74 | |
Stop Moving the Camera | 75 | |
Assignment 7 | At the Dog Park | 75 |
How not to move the camera | 77 | |
Assignment 8 | More Dog Park | 77 |
Moving the camera | 78 | |
Lighting | 80 | |
Dark scenes | 80 | |
Backlighting | 81 | |
Sound Coverage | 82 | |
Ambience | 83 | |
Don't worry about dialog | 84 | |
Turn off the music when you shoot | 85 | |
What to Shoot: Small Moments | 85 | |
The expense of small moments | 87 | |
Candid photography | 87 | |
Non-candid photography | 89 | |
Summary | 90 | |
Chapter 4 | Organizing Your Video | 91 |
Organizing Your Materials | 92 | |
Labeling the tape | 93 | |
Tape labels: "reel names" | 94 | |
Logging | 96 | |
Tape logs | 98 | |
Assignment 9 | Making a Log Book | 98 |
Your logging station | 99 | |
How much detail to log? | 100 | |
Storage and Care of Videotapes | 101 | |
Tape care | 102 | |
Head-cleaning tapes | 103 | |
Disable record (a.k.a. "locking" a tape) | 103 | |
Chapter 5 | Getting Ready to Edit | 105 |
The Camera and the Computer | 106 | |
Digital Video Is Big | 106 | |
Shooting Ratios | 106 | |
Culling vs. editing | 107 | |
Cabling | 108 | |
Cables and terminals | 108 | |
The most important cable | 112 | |
Cabling 101: Hooking everything up | 113 | |
Your "Edit Bay" | 114 | |
Several good monitor-setup options | 115 | |
Looping the video | 118 | |
Chairs | 119 | |
Choosing What to Edit | 121 | |
Capturing Video | 122 | |
Tips | 125 | |
Chapter 6 | Editing | 129 |
Who Needs Editing? | 129 | |
Editing Terms and Concepts | 130 | |
Sync sound | 130 | |
Rippling/not rippling | 131 | |
Reading a shot | 132 | |
Source and master | 132 | |
Timeline | 134 | |
Editing functions (inserts and trims) | 135 | |
Track controls | 135 | |
Media files vs. project files | 136 | |
Output (to tape) | 137 | |
Rubin's Rules of Editing | 138 | |
Your Post-Production Schedule | 142 | |
Approaches to Editing | 143 | |
Method 1 | Cutting down (the marble-sculpting method) | 143 |
Method 2 | Building up (the clay-sculpting method) | 144 |
Your second pass | 144 | |
Editing Assignment 10 | Compilation Music Video | 144 |
"Real" Editing | 146 | |
Assignment 11 | An Interview | 150 |
The Art of Editing | 153 | |
Cutting on action | 153 | |
Motion example: Small-moment kid vid | 154 | |
A little trick | 155 | |
Re-editing and Versions | 156 | |
Sound and Sound Tracks | 157 | |
Your Master Tape | 158 | |
Preparing your master tape | 160 | |
Quality control | 162 | |
Titles and Special Effects | 162 | |
Dissolves | 162 | |
Fades | 163 | |
Titles | 164 | |
Motion effects (slow-down only) | 166 | |
Final Assignment: Small-Moment Video | 166 | |
Version 1 | With production sound | 167 |
Version 2 | With a song from a CD | 167 |
Version 3 | With ambience | 167 |
Version 4 | With narration | 168 |
Finishing Up | 168 | |
Digital output: CD-ROMs and DVDs | 169 | |
Deleting files and cleaning up | 169 | |
Copyright law | 170 | |
VHS dubs | 171 | |
Conclusion | 172 | |
Index | 173 |